Stuff yer bake

I was wondering what to do with the rest of the fabulous crab I got in Devon so I browsed through the selection of cookery books I brought with me and found a crab ravioli recipe from Rick Stein’s Seafood book. I have never been terribly successful at at making ravioli as they are so fiddly and always seem to fall apart on me and I haven’t made fresh pasta in a while so it took me time to get to grips with the pasta machine again. I really need to invest in one of those ravioli tray things as they are supposed to be quite useful.

Apart from the fact that it took me the best part of two hours to make and some of them burst they turned out very nicely. The sauce in particular was simple yet very flavoursome and well worth the wait.

Fresh Pasta

225g Plain flour (type 00)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

2 medium eggs

2 medium egg yolks

Put all the ingredients into a food processor and blend. Once it has come together, tip out onto a work surface and knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is soft and elastic. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Ravioli

175g fresh white crab meat

1 tblsp melted butter

a small sprinkle of cayenne pepper

Parsley and lemon butter

100g butter

2 tblsp chopped flat leaf parsley

1/2 tsp grated lemon zest

2 tsps lemon juice

2 garlic cloves very finely chopped

Mix all the ingredients for the ravioli together. Divide the pasta into three or four pieces and roll out in your machine or with a rolling in until quite thin. Keep dusting the pasta with flour to stop it sticking to the rollers. On one half of a sheet of pasta dot a teaspoon of mixture at 3inch intervals. Wet around each mound of crab with a little water, then fold over the other half of the pasta and starting from the inside out press down around the little mounds pushing out all the air so you have no bubbles in the ravioli. This is the complicated bit and would be so much more simple with a ravioli tray if you have one. Make sure that you flour each one well so that they don’t stick together as they will tear easily. Once your have used up all the mixture get some salted boiling water ready and add the ravioli. Cook for about three minutes, then drain.

While they are cooking make the butter dressing. Simply melt the butter with all the other ingredients, seasoning to taste and once the ravioli is drained and plated up, spoon over the top and serve. Then sit down for a well deserved rest.

Tags: butter, cayenne pepper, crab ravioli, eggs, food, garlic, lemon, parsley, pasta, recipe, Rick Stein, salt, seafood

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 9:27 pm and is filed under disasters, fish, triumphs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.